INTERVIEWER:   Good evening Mr. Rehder and how are you tonight?

REHDER:   Fine Dr. Zarbock.  Nice to have you here.  I’m very comfortably situated in my house and maybe I’m going to say some things I shouldn’t say and maybe I’ll say some things that might be useful.  I think we’d like to talk about the Merchant Marines, which occupied 3-1/2 years of my life.  I’d like to tell you a little bit about how I got into the Merchant Marines, how I got in and some history.

I only had one year of college.  Then I went to florist school and after Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, everybody was either enlisting or being drafted.  I tried to get into the Army and Navy also in OCS.  I couldn't get into either one of them because I didn't have but a year of college. 

So what we did, I went to a shipping agent here because I had been working as a tour director for Bradley Tours since 1933.  In 1937, I took 35 people around the world for 3-1/2 months and got caught in war in China when Japan invaded China.  We were in Peking.  Everybody else had been to Peking and seen the Great Wall, but we didn't even get to see the Great Wall cause we were bombed out.

We were bombed out on an express, supposedly an express, but it was a troop train and we were three days in getting from Peking down to Shanghai.  We had to eat as we went along and all of us did the best we could in the boxcars we were in.  But anyway I thought that experience would be a good thing to get into the Merchant Marines.

I didn't know what to do or how to get in.  The shipyards had been building here at the time and I’ll tell you a little bit about the shipyard in just a little bit.  Anyway I went to Alexander Sprunt and Sons which was a shipping agency in Wilmington and that’s where the Cotton Exchange is now, a beautiful building. 

They had a man there named John Carver who was a friend of mine and he told me that the thing to do was to go to the steamship company in New York and one in Baltimore and apply for a position as purser or clerk typist on the ships that were being launched at the time.

What had happened was the passenger ships were being recalled or transported.  The shipping companies had no ships and they couldn't run it by themselves so the Army and the Navy took over the manning of the ships, but the maritime commission under the Coast Guard all had a lot to do with it. 

What the Maritime Commission did was to lease the ships to the shipping companies and I was given a letter of introduction to a Lyke Steamship Company in New York and to Merchants and Miners in Baltimore who had been leasing ships that had been built in the Liberty yards.

I went first to New York and went into see Lyke’s and took my resume and I liked them very much and they evidently liked me because they said, “Mr. Rehder, we’ll be glad to put your application in a hold, but if you’d come yesterday, you would have been lucky or unlucky because we just sent someone that we hired yesterday to serve for 10 months so maybe you’re lucky and maybe you’re not”.  He said they would keep my resume and get in contact with me.

I wasn’t satisfied with that because I thought I’d be drafted so I went down to Baltimore on my way home.  I went into Merchants and Miners and went in and they seemed sort of glad to see me and I didn't know why until I found out later that they were new in the game too and they had ships and they needed to put people on and they didn't have enough applicants as it was.

So I spent the day with them and they showed me all kinds of things, how to sign articles, just behavior and one thing or another.  I thought gosh, maybe I’ve gotten into something here.  So when I started to leave, they said Mr. Rehder, you’ll have to let us know within six days whether you can go or not.  I said, “Go? I didn't even know I’d been accepted.”  They said well yes, the government is going to make money on you and we are too cause we’re going to send you to Wilmington, North Carolina (laughter).

I couldn’t believe it.  But anyway I got home and I had to decide, I was in the florist business with my father and we had very good help at the time.  We had Miss Mildred Robbins who eventually was with me for 62 years.  They headed the florist shop with my father and I told them that I had six days. 

As soon as I got home, I got a telegram from them saying please report in four days.  Your ship is the Nathaniel Alexander.  The name Nathaniel Alexander was from quite a patriot here in North Carolina back in about 1700-1800.  That was the name of the ship.  It was the 23rd Liberty Ship that was built.  How the Liberty Ship got to Wilmington was because Newport News Shipbuilding Company in Norfolk was not designated as one of the places to build the ships because they were already building Navy ships there.

There were about 12 to 17 places that built liberty ships around the country and Wilmington was one.  It was founded by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company.  The first ship was launched I believe December 6, 1941.  See what had happened was they needed all these liberty ships.  Off the coast the submarines were advancing and had been attacking so much shipping and the British had sent patrol ships over to guard our coast, but there were over 1000 ships sunk within January, February and March of 1942.

There were a lot of deaths up and down the coast.  So when our ship, the Nathaniel Alexander, went out of here, I did report.  I was amazed, I’ll tell you a little funny experience.  They had told me, they had sent one of their vice presidents of Merchants and Miners down here, they told me that my captain would be at the Cape Fear Hotel and for me to go to him, report to him, get in touch with him and he would tell me what to do.

They said they wanted to tell me that my job was clerk typist purser and you have to do everything the captain tells you to do.  You are under his command at all times.  So I reported to Captain Quinlan and took my florist truck.  I never will forget it.  It was a Chevrolet truck.  We had a driver named Theodore.  I packed my things and said goodbye to my family and everybody in the store and picked up Captain Quinlan at the Cape Fear Hotel and we started down Front Street.

We were going out Front Street to the shipyard.  We got to Front and Dock Street and there was a big sign there that said beer.  I didn't pay any attention to it.  He looked at it and said, “Stop this van”.  I asked him why and he said we were going in to have a beer.  I had never been at those places down at Front and Dock Street, never have been there since.

We went in there and I didn't have one beer, I had two beers (laughter).  So that was my first introduction to Captain Quinlan as far as taking his command as to what to do.  But anyway we got to the shipyard.  It was quite exciting to go onto the new ship, the Nathaniel Alexander.  We spent the night aboard and met some of the officers.  Aboard the ship, see what it is, there are 45 men on the crew of a liberty ship and of that, that is the deck department and the engineering department.

The deck department has the captain and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd mate and subordinates under that.  The engineer has a chief engineer, 2nd engineer and 3rd engineer.  Then all the rest of the people are down below.  The ship itself has three decks and a mast house and has five hatches.  Hatches are holds as you call them.  It has three forward and two back and then the super structure of the structures in the middle.

My quarters were unfortunately on the second deck.  It was right over the galley which is right underneath.  It was so hot in there, I couldn't stand it hardly.  I had to put shoes on every time I put my foot on the deck.  Anyway, I was right across from third mate so I was able to use his room some to cool off in.  But anyway, that was later on.

That first night we stayed aboard.  My first duty was to go to the train station, Atlantic Coastline Train Station, which is no more.  It moved to Jacksonville.  I was to meet the crew that was being sent down from Baltimore.  When the train came, the crew got off and they were all drunk, all the seamen, just as drunk as they could be.  They wanted an advance of money right away.  They did not want to get on the ship, did not want to sign on.

They kept yelling “National Maritime Union” and I didn't know what they were yelling, but I soon found out.  I was soon embarrassed because the commander of Fort Davis, Camp Davis, was down there with some of his lieutenants and some of his officers and I was in charge of all these drunks hollering and yelling and sitting on the rails and down on the sidewalk.  What I did was call Peter Brown Ruffin who is a wonderful man here in town.  Peter is about my age, no, he’s two years older than I am.  He’s 92.

He was captain of the port at that time and I called him and asked him what to do.  He said he would send patrolmen up and he sent them up and sent the black mariah is what I call them, patrol car.  We loaded the men in there, promising that they would get an advance and we finally got them on board.  That was one thing I had to do. They had to sign the articles to testify that they would behave and do what they were supposed to do.

We had trouble the whole time.  But anyway that night, we were leaving the next morning.  We didn't know where we were going. I didn't know where we were going.  The captain, of course, knew where we were going.  We went up the river to turn around in front of the customhouse and the ship stopped.  Chief engineer called up and said a turbine had blown and we had to get off of the ship and come back to town.

Quinlan went back to the hotel for the night and didn't stay aboard the ship because there was nothing he could do about it.  It was towed back to the shipyard.  Fortunately it was corrected right away.  I went home and said goodbyes again and came back out.  We sailed about to the end of Cape Fear River opposite Bald Head Island.  We were scared to death, I mean I was scared to death and most of the men were because so many ships had been blown up right off the coast there.

We hugged the coastline all the way down to Charleston.  I don’t know whether I’m jumping ahead in my story or not, but, oh yes, I want to tell you.  Beside the 45 crew members of the Nathaniel Alexander, we had 24 Navy men, seamen, and one lieutenant JG Naval officer.  Aboard the liberty ship on the stern, we had a 5-inch gun which I’ve got the shell right there.  We had four placements of 20mm guns on the upper deck, two on starboard and two on portside. 

We were very fortunate to have ensign Eugene Ross, no Lieutenant, he’d been promoted and so they stood guard the whole time.  They’re available for any work that had to be done.  Now you want to know who was in charge.  US Maritime Commission was in charge and they in turn would charge the Merchant Marines and other Merchant Marines, the US Coast Guard came under that.  Then came the Army and the Navy.

The reason the Army and Navy had anything to do with it was because the liberty ships were the ones that took all the Army supplies over.  So the Army had to be aboard and I forgot to tell you there were two Army officers aboard, too, that went with us, originally, from the point of embarkation, which was Charleston, South Carolina.  There were four cadets from the maritime school in wherever it is, up north some place.  We had four young cadets, two engineering cadets and two deck cadets.

They were fine little boys.  They were really good.  Then we had the radio operator.  I’m jumping ahead of that, but remind me to tell you something about the radio operator.  We hugged the coast down to Charleston and when we got into Charleston, we went up until we got ready to load.  Who should be in charge of loading that ship for the Army but William Sterling Roberts who is from Wilmington, North Carolina, and he was president of ____ Shipping Company in Wilmington.

He’d been commissioned and he was in charge of our whole loading of Army supplies.  We loaded there and we loaded all Army supplies, everything from jeeps to pieces of building material and anything that was going to India.  We stayed in Charleston quite a while and had to change berths quite a few times because of the diversification of the things we put aboard.

Finally we were ready to leave Charleston.  We left Charleston and we were not in convoy.  We were by ourselves and went to Key West.  We stayed at Key West for a while to wait for our convoy.  We went from Key West and I fished a little bit there from the stern of the ship (laughter).  I don’t know what I caught.  It looked like little tunas, they were blue and green.  So that helped with the time passing.

But anyway from Key West we went in convoy past Aruba and then went to Trinidad.  We loaded ship supplies in Trinidad.  While in Trinidad, I got off one day and went to the Pitch Lake.  It bubbles asphalt up all the time.  I don’t know whether people know that or not, but it shift a lot _____ in ways of shipping it back to the States. 

Anyway while we were there, the steward asked me did I like avocadoes and I told him yes I did.  Half the crew didn't even know what an avocado was.  Anyway he ordered 80 cases of avocadoes and they all went bad cause they don’t last.  While in Trinidad, I was going to tell you about the radio operator. 

We were still having a lot of trouble with the crew.  I was in charge of the slop chest and they bought a lot of cigarettes and they bought a lot of mints, lots of chocolate, lots of cake and they didn't buy any cold clothes yet because we were still in the hot weather.  Anyway the boswain, who was a drunk anyway, got up and mixed up some alcohol of some kind, alcohol and something else and something else and almost passed out.

The captain asked me to take him in a small boat and take him ashore to the naval hospital there in Trinidad.  I did and he died in my arms going from ship to shore.  Eventually we buried him there and sent a wreath of flowers.  Anyway the radio operator, what I was going to tell you, his sister in Chicago and he made a mistake.  Instead of saying died from ship to shore, he said died from ship to whore (laughter). 

It’s a good thing I caught it.  Anyway we finally left Trinidad and we were the first ship to cross the south Atlantic by ourselves and not in convoy.  Three months later the James Sprunt from Wilmington behind us was torpedoed and everyone lost on the ship, the entire Navy crew, the officers and captain.  So we were in danger.

Anyway we were 20 some odd days going across and we passed St. Helena where Napoleon had been exiled and then we went to a place on the African coast called Wallace Bay and as we entered the bay, there was a British ship up on the shore that had been torpedoed.  So we stayed there for just a little while in order to get our orders to go down to Cape Town.  As we started down to Cape Town, we were out in the ocean, I was helping with the 20mm just standing guard.

All of a sudden, we sighted the periscope and I can still see it right now going through the water.  It was on the starboard side passing us.  They fired torpedoes, which fortunately did not hit our ship.  The British patrols came right out of Cape Town and were on the scene right away.  So that shook us up a little bit and that was bad because we were called to abandon ship when the periscope with torpedoes were sighted.

I ran to get what things that I had and get my quarters.  I was getting ready to go back and pick my things up in my office and I had a carton of cigarettes, binoculars and copies of slips of the captain’s business and they were gone.  Somebody had stolen them.  I was very upset about that.  I went back to the ship and we did not have to abandon ship.  But besides that, some of the crew who were all upset about everything, the chief cook got mad at one of his helpers, got a meat cleaver and chopped his arm off.

I no sooner got to Cape Town, I had to take him to the hospital and he was left in the hospital because he was so badly wounded.  I had to get another man to take his place, which meant going through all that signing the articles and getting a new crewman.  We had trouble like that all the time. 

INTERVIEWER:   Did he purposely strike him?

REHDER:   Oh yeah, he got mad with his help.  Of course there was nothing we could do about the cook because we couldn't get another cook.  We could get help, which we got.  See seamen are left in these different places for various and sundry reasons so always you can pick up somebody.  So I was able to pick up, I can’t remember the nationality, but a qualified kitchen helper to take his place.

From there we went to Port Elizabeth which is _____, South Africa, and were there for about two or three days waiting.  When we left there, we sighted a ship that we thought was a freighter, but we didn't have any contact with them.  Of course at night all the lights were out on our ship every night.

We passed Madagascar and went to Colombo.  They were delighted to see us, quite delighted to see us.  We were the first US ship in there.  We brought supplies.  So then we went, after we got our orders, we had the officers and crew there and we liked it there very much. We were glad to see land and get off for a few days.  We bought clothing there, some clothing because we were going to be there for a while.

I meant to tell you when we were in Charleston, I had nothing to wear as a uniform.  I was just in civilian clothes and I wanted to have a uniform.  So the radio operator and I went into Charleston to a shop, not knowing what to get.  Nobody told us.  We were sold a whole lot of dungarees which we wore two or three times until we got to Key West.  We stopped and asked what service we belonged to. Then in Key West we got up with some maritime people who helped us with our uniform.

So when we got to India, we had some and I have pictures somewhere.  We went up to Karachi, which is near Pakistan.  We unloaded all the Army there and I can’t think of the officer’s name who was in charge, but he was very helpful and wrote home to my mother and to other people’s mothers and parents to let them know that the ship had got there safely cause see we couldn't send any word back.

So we unloaded there and it took about two weeks to unload.  Then we loaded again and guess what we loaded, ammunition (laughter).  We loaded ammunition.  Every hold had ammunition.  They were about scared to death to have that.  Every bit of Army was taken off and ammunition put in to go to Calcutta, which is on the other side of India.

So we started back with all this ammunition, put into Colombo again and while we were in Colombo, the ship’s _____ there asked me, he said, knowing we were going to Calcutta, he said, “Ensign Rehder, my wife lives in Britain and she’s a miniature painter and the little glasses that go over the frame can’t be made anymore because of the war in Britain.  The only place to get them is in Calcutta and would you be kind enough to see if you get me 100 little glasses.”  I told him that I would try to.

We got to Calcutta, but on the way—and this is a name I can’t spell—we stopped to refuel at Vishakhapatnam, which is on the east coast of India.  We stopped there and it was very interesting to see the way the people lived.  Then we went on up to Calcutta and we were anchored in the Hooghly River and we were so afraid that we might get blown up, that’s why, and the captain never left the deck except at night.

I remember the birds there would come down and steal his lunch.  The ravens would fly down and grab the food so you had to be careful about that.  Anyway the man that asked me to get the miniatures, I had to go about an hour’s ride and I was able to get them for him.  In Calcutta, we loaded jute, some kind of drugs or something, sulfa of some kind and some kind of drugs and 300 monkeys to bring back to Philadelphia, whatever it was, where they experiment and those monkeys were horrible.

They not only stunk, smelled bad, but they ran all over the ship.  That’s when we used the cadets to catch them all the time.

INTERVIEWER:   They weren’t in cages?

REHDER:   No, they weren’t.  Yes they were in cages, but they could get out of the cages.  Monkeys can do anything.  I think really a lot of times the crew got them out and messed around.  We had so much trouble with the crew.  But anyway Calcutta was a horrible place.  We had to go into dry dock there so we were there quite a while.

INTERVIEWER:   Monkeys and all.

REHDER:   No, the monkeys didn't get on until we left, the last day.  The monkeys didn't get on until we left, thank heaven.  I can’t think of what else we loaded.  I’ve got it written down, but I won’t look it up. 

INTERVIEWER:   No one could top a cargo of monkeys.

REHDER:   Three hundred monkeys.  They were going to Philadelphia, whatever it was they were going for, experiments.  We went back to refuel and then we came on back to Colombo and we got our orders and we were 45 days from Colombo back to South America.  From the time we left Calcutta, it was 45 days until we got back to South America.  We went across of the Pacific by ourselves.  We stopped at Perth, Australia and went by Hobart and then we went by.

There was an albatross that followed us the whole time.  They said that was bad luck, but it did follow us the whole time.  We went by Easter Island.  Of course we couldn't stop there, but we did see Easter Island.  And then we went up and went by the coast of South America and came into Panama.

INTERVIEWER:   You circumnavigated the globe.

REHDER:   Yeah, we went around the world.  We went 45,000 miles all together, 40,000 miles all together.  Then we came through the canal and stopped at both Panama, Cristobal and Panama and then went to Quantanamo, a little hard for me to remember all this.  It’s been so long ago.  Went to Quantanamo Bay for orders and then went on to New York.

We were very happy.  We had no bad breakdowns after the first one we had and we were very happy.  I hated to leave the captain, but I had had enough of the Merchant Marines with the crewmembers.  They were very, very difficult and difficult to sign off.  My job was to help pay them off.  What interested me was, the National Maritime Union was right there.  They took the money from me and took their dues out of it before they gave money to them, which shows how they were.  Well anyway that was the end of that, nine months.

INTERVIEWER:   Who unloaded the monkeys?

REHDER:   (Laughter) The Army was unloading the ship, not the Navy.  The Navy was only in charge of the gun crew so that’s why the Navy was on the liberty ships, to protect everything.  The Army had to load, that was under their jurisdiction.

INTERVIEWER:   So they showed up with cages.

REHDER:   Yeah and one time, one was on the deck, and they smelled horrible.  Anyway I never heard anymore from them.  But that was the end of that trip.  Now do you want to hear some more?

INTERVIEWER:   Yes.

REHDER:   I came home on leave, but I was under orders to report back and I went back to Baltimore to re-indoctrinate myself about what was going on in our business, how things had changed.  I got an upgrade to lieutenant JG.  I meant to tell you before I started all this, there were a whole lot of papers that had to be gotten.  You had to have a seaman passport.  You had to have all kinds of papers, naturalization papers and one thing or another, which I was able to get which made it easier to get aboard the ship. 

Here’s a picture of the gun crew.  That was in Calcutta on the Nathaniel Alexander. 

INTERVIEWER:   Well did you ship out again after that?

REHDER:   I tried very hard to get in the Navy after that, after having had that experience.  I did not hear from the Navy and I did hear from the draft board again.  So I thought the best thing for me to do was to ship back out.  So I did go and we went this time to Panama City, Florida.  Panama City had a shipbuilding yard there and we were to get on the ship, the Dolly Madison. 

The Dolly Madison was under construction there.  When we got there, the Dolly Madison was not completed, but the Victor Herbert was completed so what they did, the switched Dolly Madison because we had orders to get out right away.  So we went on the Dolly Madison.  We had a captain, Captain Rickshaw, and a whole new crew and all that had to be signed.

We went to New Orleans and got our orders there and then we went to Puerto Rico to San Juan and went to a little place called Juanilla.  Gosh, I hadn’t thought about that name. I don’t know how to spell it, but being in the florist business, I was excited to get there because they had so many flowers.  They had bougainvilleas and everything, and they had beautiful jasmine, what they call flower of love, fleur d'amour.  I was so happy to see that. 

Of all the things to load for Britain, we loaded raw sugar.  Now what they were using it for, I don’t know, ammunition I guess.  We loaded raw sugar in all the holds.  That was our ballast in the holds. We went from there to Guantanamo Bay and then from there, we went back up to New York again and we loaded Army again all on the decks.  Just full of stuff, Army stuff for England.  Of course the captain knew where we were going and I knew where we were going, but the crew didn't know where we were going.  We loaded all Army.

INTERVIEWER:   What year was this?

REHDER:   This was 1943.

INTERVIEWER:   And what season of the year?

REHDER:   This was the beginning of September and October.  The first place we got to, well we left New York and we got out and we got into what I thought was a hurricane.  It was terrible.  The waves they said were 40 to 50 feet high.  We had to move all of our deck stuff around, loosen it up some.  Then we had to go back to New York.  We had just got out of New York, hadn’t gotten very far.

We went back into port and tightened up again and came out with another convoy.  It took us 14 days to get over and we went into Loch Ewe, Scotland.  We saw several Liberty Ships broken up on the rocks there.  They had not been torpedoed, but they’d gotten in trouble trying to get in.  I wasn’t allowed ashore there.  The gunnery officer and the captain got our orders and found out we were going around the top of Scotland through Scapa Flow and down the English Channel into London.

We were all quite frightened about that because we knew we were being bombarded from Germany over across Dover.  We came around and we could hear the guns and we could see firing going on.  We got into Edinburgh to Firth and in Firth one of the engineers had an appendectomy attack.  We had to get rid of him and sign somebody else on so that was something I remember quite well.

But anyway we went into the Thames and went to East India docks.  It was down near Greenwich, between Greenwich and the port of London itself.  We were way far away from town, but we were then up to a bus line after walking about five or six blocks, the end of the bus line.  So we get in town and go to London.

While we were there, one of the ships near us that had just come in from Spain with Valencia oranges was hit by a bomb and our ship was covered with oranges.  So we had oranges for a while.  The raids were going on quite often while we were there.  I don’t remember how long we were there.  I don’t remember loading anything.  I don’t think we loaded anything coming back.

We did come back light.  Of course I wanted to tell you that in a lot of places, we had to zigzag.  We also had torpedo nets that you put down on the side of the ship.  Anyway it took us another 14 days to get back in convoy.  We went into Boston this time.  We had our leave and we loaded and went back to New York and loaded again and went back to England.

Now this time we were taking supplies for the invasion and taking the same kind of load.  Anything that the Army wanted, we put on, jeeps and everything else.  We loaded again and this time we went into the port of Bristol.  While we were there, the gunnery officer and I took a train and went into London and looked around London and came on back.

The captain had us take him over to Wales to Cardiff because that’s where his next orders would be.  So we went to Cardiff, we got on the wrong train.  We got it straight.  I had another bad experience with him because he went to London with us one time and he wanted a hat.  I told him that I knew a good haberdashery in London cause I’d been there many times before when I worked.

So I took him to the haberdashery and he bought a hat, paid a lot of money for it.  He was a great big man, giant looking fellow with sparkling eyes.  He was so proud of that hat.  We went to lunch at a place called the Victoria.  We went into lunch and he came back and somebody had stolen his hat (laughter).  He was mad.

Anyway we came off that trip and we went to New York again.  For the third time, we went back.  We went to Liverpool.  Liverpool had been bombed out.  It was pitiful, just pitiful.  All the docks and everything were awful.  The ship’s agent was nice to us and took us to his house for a meal and we enjoyed it very much.  I had taken some things for people in London and I had to mail them back because the invasion went on while we were in Liverpool.

Then we were in convoy back again.  Now that was 1944.  The time that we were in London, the gunnery officer and I were at this small hotel.  We were with friends eating dinner.  An alarm went off and the friends we were with told us to go down to the shelter.  We went down to the shelter and stayed. A few of them went down and got little pieces of plane that had been shot down.  I didn't get any.

It was quite scary to be there.  The newspaper the next day said that it was the worst raid they’d had in quite some time.  Anyway we finally got back, it’s a little bit hazy in my mind.  We went over there three times.  Well then of course we needed to go to the Pacific so I went back to Baltimore.  Then I was sent to Pascagoula, wherever that is, Mississippi, and got a new ship.  This was a Victory Ship, which was a little bit better than a liberty ship.

The name of the ship was Dunley H. Thomas and we went into Pascagoula again and went through the canal again and went up to San Francisco to Oakland and loaded there.  This is all a little hazy to me.  It’s been so long ago.  We loaded in Oakland and we loaded for the invasion of Japan and we went and sailed across the Pacific.  I can’t remember if we were in convoy or not, we weren’t in convoy then.  We were by ourselves.

We went to Hawaii first and I had been to Hawaii and loved it so much.  It just irked me to death to be on the ship and not be able to go ashore, but to see that beautiful land which I think is as pretty a thing as I’ve ever seen.  Anyway we went from there in convoy and stopped at Eniewetok, stopped there and that was a lovely place.  The water was so blue and a rainbow came and ended right on our deck on the hatch.  There was no pot of gold, but it was the end of the rainbow right there.

Then we went from there by convoy to Viak, New Guinea and while we were there, the Japs had already been run out, the little caves and all were there.  I meant to show you I have a bomb in the back room that I got from there.  I had to give a fifth of the captain’s whiskey to get it.  The engineer made sure it was unfused.  We stayed there for a while.  This is 1945 now, May or June of ’45.

Finally I got back in July and came on home on leave thinking that I did not get a discharge.  I was very fortunate to meet my wife while I was home on leave.  We were married the 20th of August just a few days, three weeks after we met because I didn't know if I would have to go back or not.

I finally got my discharge in December so I was really gone three and a half years in the Merchant Marines.  That was an experience that I’m glad I had, but I’d never want to have it again, but I did see the world.

INTERVIEWER:   You have children don’t you Mr. Rehder?

REHDER:   Yes.

INTERVIEWER:   I’m going to ask you something that I’ve asked all the other interviewees.  Will you look right into the camera and know a couple of things.  You will never be a day older than you are today.  This tape will always keep you at this age on this date in this place.  Tell your great-grandchildren what did all of the war experience teach you and what did it mean to you?  You’re talking to the future.

REHDER:   The war experience was not a wonderful thing to me, but it was something that I felt I had to do.  It meant that it was trying to protect the loved ones at home and our wonderful land.  It wasn’t patriotism that made me go, but it was something akin to it I believe.  I was really glad to go and happy to come back too.

INTERVIEWER:   Is anything ever settled by going to war?

REHDER:   No, we’ve had two world wars and look at what’s going on now.  This is a war of terror.  I believe if there was more Christianity in this world, we’d be better off because that’s the way we all want to live.  That’s not the way that those are living.